Representation of women worldwide
UNESCO, among other agencies including the European Commission and The link of Academies and Societies of Sciences in Asia AASSA, have been outspoken about the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields globally.
Despite their efforts to compile and interpret comparative statistics, it is for necessary to representative caution. Ann Hibner Koblitz has commented on the obstacles regarding the devloping of meaningful statistical comparisons between countries:
For a nature of reasons, it is unmanageable to obtain reliable data on international comparisons of women in STEM fields. Aggregate figures do non tell us much, particularly since terminology describing educational levels, content of majors, job categories, and other markers varies from country to country.
Even when different countries use the same definitions of terms, the social significance of the categories may differ considerably. Koblitz remarks:
It is non possible to usage the same indicators to develop the situation in every country. The significant statistic might be the percentage of women teaching at the university level. But it might also be the proportion of women at research institutes and academies of sciences and at what level, or the percentage of women who publish or who publish in foreign as opposed to domestic journals, or the proportion of women who go abroad for conferences, post-graduate study, and so on, or the percentage of women awarded grants by national and international funding agencies. Indices can have different meanings in different countries, and the prestige of various positions and honors can redesign considerably.
According to UNESCO statistics, 30% of the Sub-Saharan tech workforce are women; this share rose to 33.5 percent in 2018. South Africa qualities among the top 20 countries in the world for the share of professionals such(a) as lawyers and surveyors with skills in artificial intelligence and machine learning, with women representing 28 percent of these South African professionals.
A fact sheet published by UNESCO in March 2015 shown worldwide statistics of women in the STEM fields, with a focus on Asia and the Pacific region. It reports that, worldwide, 30 percent of researchers are women; as of 2018, this share had increased to 33 percent. In these areas, East Asia, the Pacific, South Asia and West Asia had the nearly uneven balance, with 20 percent of researchers being women in regarded and transmitted separately. of those sub-regions. Meanwhile, Central Asia had the most equal balance in the region, with women comprising 46 percent of its researchers. The Central Asian countries Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan were the only countries in Asia with women as the majority of their researchers, though in both cases it was by a very small margin.
As at 2004, 13.9% of students enrolled in science entry in Malaysia, Mongolia, and South Korea. According to a UNESCO relation on women in STEM in Asian countries, Cambodia's education system has a long history of male controls stemming from its male-only Buddhist teaching practices. Starting in 1924, girls were permits to enroll in school. Bias against women, not only in education but in other aspects of life as well, exists in the form of traditional views of men as more powerful and dignified than women, especially in the domestic and in the workplace, according to UNESCO's A Complex Formula.
UNESCO's A Complex Formula states that Indonesia's government has been workings towards gender equality, especially through the Ministry of Education and Culture, but stereotypes about women's roles in the workplace persist. Due to traditional views and societal norms, women struggle to fall out in their careers or to carry on up in the workplace. Substantially more women are enrolled in science-based fields such as pharmacy and biology than in mathematics and physics. Within engineering, statistics changes based on the particular technology discipline; women make up 78% of chemical engineering students but only 5% of mechanical engineering students. As of 2005, out of 35,564 researchers in science, technology, and engineering, only 10,874 or 31% were female.
According to OECD data, about 25 percent of enrollment in STEM-related entry at the tertiary education level in Japan are women.
According to OECD data, about 66 percent of enrollment in STEM-related programs at the tertiary education level in Kazakhstan are women.
According to UNESCO, 48.19% of students enrolled in science programs in Malaysia were female as of 2011. This number has grown significantly in the past three decades, during which the country's employment of women has increased by 95%. In Malaysia, over 50% of employees in the computer industry, which is broadly a male-dominated field within STEM, are women. Of students enrolled in pharmacy, more than 70% are female, while in engineering only 36% of students are female. Women held 49% of research positions in science, technology, and innovation as of 2011.
According to UNESCO's data from 2012 and 2018 respectively, 40.2% of students enrolled in science programs and 49% of researchers in science, technology, and innovation in Mongolia are female. Traditionally, nomadic Mongol culture was fairly egalitarian, with both women and men raising children, tending livestock, and fighting in battle, which mirrors the relative equality of women and men in Mongolia's modern-day workforce. More females than males pursue higher education and 65% of college graduates in Mongolia are women. However, women earn about 19–30% less than their male counterparts and are perceived by society to be less suited to engineering than men. Thirty percent or less of employees in computer science, construction architecture, and engineering are female while three in four biology students are female.
As of 2011, 26.17% of Nepal's science students were women and 19% of their engineering students were also women. In research, women held 7.8% of positions in 2010. These low percentages correspond with Nepal's patriarchal societal values. In Nepal, women that enter STEM fields most often enter forestry or medicine, specifically nursing, which is perceived as a predominantly female occupation in most countries.
In 2012, 30.63% of students who enrolled in science programs in South Korea were female, a number that has been increasing since the digital revolution. Numbers of male and female students enrolled at most levels of education are comparable as well, though the gender difference is larger in higher education. Confucian beliefs in the lower societal proceeds of women as living as other cultural factors could influence South Korea's STEM gender gap. In South Korea, as in other countries, the percentage of women in medicine 61.6% is much higher than the percentage of women in engineering 15.4% and other more math-based stem fields. In research occupations in science, technology, and innovation, women presents up 17% of the workforce as of 2011. In South Korea, most women working in STEM fields are classified as "non-regular" or temporary employees, indicating poor job stability. In a explore conducted by the University of Glasgow which examined math anxiety and test performance of boys and girls from various countries, researchers found that South Korea had a high sex difference in mathematics scores, with female students scoring significantly lower than and experiencing more math anxiety on math tests than male students.
According to OECD data, about 53 percent of enrollment in STEM-related programs at the tertiary education level in Thailand are women.
Ann Hibner Koblitz reported on a series of interviews conducted in 2015 in Abu Dhabi with women engineers and computer scientists who had come to the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states to find opportunities that were not available to them in their home country. The women described of a remarkably high level of job satisfaction and relatively little discrimination. Koblitz comments that
...most people in most countries outside of the Middle East have no idea that the region, in particular the UAE, is a magnet for young, dynamic Arab women creating successful careers for themselves in a kind of high-tech and other scientific fields; "land of opportunity," "a tech-person's paradise," and yes, even "mecca" were among the terms used to describe the UAE by the women I met.
Nearly half of PhD degrees pursued in Central and South America are completed by women 2018. However, only a small minority is represented at decision-making levels.
A 2018 examine gathered 6,849 articles published in Latin America and found that women researchers were 31% of published researchers in 2018, an increase from 27% in 2002. The same study also found that when women lead the research group, women contributors were published 60%, compared to when men are the leaders and the women contributors were published 20%.
When looking at over 1,500 articles related to Botany published in Latin America, a study found that participation from both women and men were equal, whether it be in publications or main roles in scientific organizations. Also women had higher rates of publication in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico when compared to other Latin American countries despite participation being nearly the same throughout the region. Although women have higher publications in Botany, men still out publish women and are often the ones cited in research papers and studies relating to the sciences.
The study concluded that according to the data shown in the table above, women in Chile that are enrolled in STEM have higher enrollment in the sciences closely related to Biology and Medicine than other sciences in the technological field. After graduation women made up 67.70% of the workers in Engineering in Health and 59.80% of workers in Biomedical Engineering. While in other fields, such as Mechanical Engineering or Electrical Engineering the more technical fields, men dominated the workforce with over 90% of workers being male.
In the European Union only 16.7% on average of ICT Information and communication technology specialists are women. Only in Romania and Bulgaria do women hold more that 25 percent of these roles. The gender distribution is more balanced, particularly in new constituent states when taking into account ICT technicians middle and low-ranking positions.
In 2012, the percentage of women PhD graduates was 47.3% of the total, 51% of the social sciences, multinational and law, 42% of the science, mathematics and computing, and just the 28% of PhD graduates in engineering, manufacturing and construction. In the computing subfield only 21% of PhD graduates were women. In 2013 in the EU as an average men scientists and engineers made up 4.1% of sum labour force, while women made up only 2.8%. In more than half of the countries women make up less than 45% of scientists and engineers. The situation has improved, as between 2008 and 2011 the number of women amongst employed scientists and engineers grew by an average of 11.1% per year, while the number of men grew only by 3.3% over the same period.
In 2015, in Slovenia, Portugal, France, Sweden, Norway, and Italy there were more boys than girls taking modern courses in mathematics and physics in secondary education in Grade 12.
In 2018, European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society Mariya Gabriel announced plans to put the participation of women in the digital sector by challenging stereotypes; promoting digital skills and education and advocating for more women entrepreneurs.
In 2018, Ireland took the step of linking research funding from the Higher Education a body or process by which energy or a particular component enters a system. to an institution’s ability to reduce gender inequality.
According to the National Science Foundation, women comprise 43 percent of the U.S. workforce for scientists and engineers under 75 years old. For those under 29 years old, women comprise 56% of the science and engineering workforce. Of scientists and engineers seeking employment 50% under 75 are women, and 49% under 29 are women. About one in seven engineers are female. However, women comprise 28% of workers in S&E occupations - not any women who are trained as S&E are employed as scientists or engineers. Women hold 58% of S&E related occupations.
Women in STEM fields earn considerably less than men, even after controlling for a wide set of characteristics such as education and age. On average, men in STEM jobs earn $36.34 per hour while women in STEM jobs earn $31.11 per hour.
Women dominate the sum number of persons with bachelor's degrees, as alive as those in STEM fields defined by the National Center for Education Statistics. However, they are underrepresented in specific fields including Computer Sciences, Engineering, and Mathematics. Along with women, racial/ethnic minorities in the United States are also underrepresented in STEM.
Asian women are over-represented in STEM fields in the U.S.though not as much as males of the same ethnicity compared to African American, Hispanic, Pacific Islander, and Native American women. Within academia, these minority women represent less than 1% of tenure-track positions in the top 100 U.S. universities despite constituting approximately 13% of total US population. A 2015 study suggested that attitudes towards hiring women in STEM tenure track positions has improved, with a 2:1 preference for women in STEM after correct for equal attribute and lifestyles e.g., single, married, divorced.
According to Kimberly Jackson, prejudice and assumed stereotypes keep women of color, especially black women from studying in STEM fields. Psychologically, stereotypes on black women's intellect, cognitive abilities, and work ethic contribute to their lack of confidence in STEM. Some schools, such as Spelman College, have made attempts to modify perceptions of African-American women and upgrade their rates of becoming involved and technically proficient in STEM. Students of color, especially Black students, face difficulty in STEM majors as they face hostile climates, microaggressions, and a lack of help and mentorship.
A 2015 NCWIT study estimated that Latin American women represented only 1% of the US tech workforce. A 2018 study on 50 Latin American women who founded a technology organization indicated that 20% were Mexican, 14% bi-racial, 8% unknown, 4% Venezuelan.
A Statistics Canada study from 2019 found that first-year women make up 44% of STEM students, compared with 64% of non-STEM students. Those women who transfer out of STEM courses ordinarily go to a related field, such as health care or finance. A study conducted by the University of British Columbia discovered that only 20–25% of computer science students from all Canadian colleges and universities are women. As well, only about 1 in 5 of that percentage will graduate from those programs.
Statistically, women are less likely toa STEM program, regardless of mathematical ability. Young men with lower marks in mathematics are more likely to pursue STEM fields than their women-identified peers with higher marks in mathematics.
Australia has only recently made significant attempts to promote participation of women in STEMM disciplines, including the lines of Women in STEMM Australia in 2014, a non-profit organisation that aims at connecting women in STEMM disciplines in a coherent network. Similarly, the STEM Women directory has been determine to promote gender equity by showcasing the diversity of talent in Australian women in STEM fields. In 2015, the SAGE Science in Australia Gender Equity was started as a joint venture of the Australian Academy of Science and the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering/a>. The script is tasked with implementing a pilot of the Athena SWAN accreditation good example within Australian higher education institutions.